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The unclued lights are cricket fielding positions. The clues contain the names of 12 present and former England cricketers: Old, Such, Onions, Grace, Jones, Crawley, May, Prior, Wood, Stokes, Cook, Anderson.
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It is two years since Boris Johnson achieved one of the most remarkable election victories in modern history. The large Tory majority gave him personal power to a degree rarely seen in British politics, a chance to reshape his country and party. Having stood for office as a ‘liberal Conservative’, he would be able to govern as one. What has he done with that authority? He ends the year with dozens of ‘red wall’ Tory MPs in open rebellion against him, rejecting his vaccine passports. During Tony Blair’s premiership, Johnson crusaded against the principle of identity cards, saying they were not just intrusive and pointless but represented a huge and unacceptable shift in the relationship between the state and the individual.
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Rather odd Mars Michael JordanTower Bridge Moscow’sLightningWinston ChurchillRussiaJennersSri LankaEl Salvador Don’t quote me Angela Rayner, the Labour deputy leader, commenting on the ConservativesThe Queen, in a video message to COP26Piers Morgan, on Good Morning BritainBoris Johnson, on lifting coronavirus restrictionsDominic Cummings, of Boris JohnsonAlok Sharma, the president of COP26Michael Gove (quoting Sir Malcolm Rifkind)Greta Thunberg, in a speech to the Youth4Climate summit in MilanDonald Trump, in a speech at the Ellipse, Washington DC, on 6 JanuaryPresident Joe Biden, on 26 August, after the fall of Kabul Beastliness Black bearCovid-19Tasmanian devilSpider crabGiant pandaGerman Shepherd (Alsatian) Corgi and dachshund (dorgi)An elk Squi.
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In normal circumstances, no one would care if staff in No. 10 held a Christmas party. But last year, Boris Johnson made parties illegal. Throughout most of December, London was under Tier 3 or 4 restrictions. Social gatherings were strictly forbidden and anyone who broke the rules was at risk of a £10,000 fine. The Prime Minister could have issued guidance and asked people to use their judgment. Instead, he criminalised non-compliance and sent the police after those who didn’t follow his rules. This is why it matters very much if a party was held in Downing Street last December. Despite multiple denials from No. 10 that any such event took place, a leaked video clip has revealed aides joking about the alleged party four days later.
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Flood relief Sir: In my lifetime there have been at least two major flood emergencies when the armed forces have played a key role: the 1947 floods, and the East Coast storm surge in 1953 (Leading article, 4 December). Both of these major catastrophes required large inputs of manpower and machinery. We should remember that National Service was in operation then, and because the second world war was so recent there was an innate sense of collective responsibility and discipline which extended to the many volunteers who came forward to help. Disaster and emergency response and relief is a highly interconnected activity, requiring many different roles and responsibilities.
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Home Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, said that the Omicron variant of coronavirus was spreading by community transmission in ‘multiple regions of England’. He gave the number of cases detected as 336 by 6 December, and the next day another 101 were found. Anyone coming from a foreign country would have to pass a coronavirus test within two days of catching a plane to Britain. A newlywed couple who had to pay £2,285 to stay in a quarantine hotel published photos of food such as a slice of quiche covered with sliced carrots in a plastic container. Sainsbury’s asked workers to postpone Christmas parties until the new year. Despite setbacks, more than 20 million booster vaccinations had been given.
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‘From harmony, from heavenly harmony, this universal frame began’ opens JOHN DRYDEN’s Song for ST CECILIA’S DAY (22 November, a Monday this year). HENRY PURCELL set it to music.
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In normal circumstances, no one would care if staff in No. 10 held a Christmas party. But last year, Boris Johnson made parties illegal. Throughout most of December, London was under Tier 3 or 4 restrictions. Social gatherings were strictly forbidden and anyone who broke the rules was at risk of a £10,000 fine. The Prime Minister could have issued guidance and asked people to use their judgment. Instead, he criminalised non-compliance and sent the police after those who didn’t follow his rules. This is why it matters very much if a party was held in Downing Street last December. Despite multiple denials from No. 10 that any such event took place, a leaked video clip has revealed aides joking about the alleged party four days later.
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That Britain no longer has the capability to maintain peace in Afghanistan other than as an appendage of the United States has been clear for decades. When President Biden made his decision to hurriedly withdraw from the country, then, Britain never had an option to do anything other than to join a messy evacuation. But at the very least we owed it to those Afghans who helped us during two decades of occupation to save as many as we could from the murderous clutches of the advancing Taliban. The testimony of a 25-year-old former junior officer in the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) shows just how far short we failed.
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Thirsty work Sixty-one pub-goers on a night out in the Tan Hill Inn, 1,500 feet up in the Pennines in West Yorkshire, were snowed in for three nights with an Oasis tribute band. Manager Nicola Townsend said everyone was in good spirits and that some people did not want to leave. Some other pubs with a tricky journey home: — Berney Arms in Norfolk is inaccessible by public road and can only be visited by boot, by boat, or, bizarrely, by train, as it has one of the country’s least-used railway stations. The pub has been closed since 2015, although there have been attempts to reopen it.
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Last week, the government published its blueprint for how it intends to remodel the army. According to the plan, it won’t matter that the number of regular troops is being reduced to the smallest size since the Napoleonic wars because the remaining forces will be more ‘agile, integrated, lethal and expeditionary’. A strange theme is emerging in Boris Johnson’s government: the Prime Minister sees the army as the solution to any given problem — yet he is cutting it back to a record low size. Like Tony Blair before him, Johnson likes to deploy troops — but to help him win battles against his own government machine. He announced this week that the army will be helping out with a speeded-up vaccine booster programme.
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The Waitrose test Sir: Like Rod Liddle, I live in the north-east of England — a little further north and nearer to Sunderland (‘Keeping up appearances’, 27 November). The area is not particularly affluent and we do not have a Waitrose. For the first 30 years of my life there was an enormous slag heap in the area: a legacy of our coal-mining era and an eyesore. There was a deposit of open-cast, accessible coal next to the heap, and an opportunity arose to dig out the coal, deposit the slag heap into the space left, and then landscape the area into a beautiful country park with ponds and trees, suitable for walking, cycling and other pursuits.
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Home In a nervous response to the entry into Britain of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 — B.1.1.529 — the wearing of face coverings in shops and public transport was made law again, though by statutory instrument not by an Act of Parliament. Anyone deemed to have been in contact with a Covid sufferer faced ten days’ house arrest. MPs voted in support of the measures after their introduction. Pubs and restaurants were exempt, but schoolchildren over the age of 12 had to wear masks in communal areas. ‘If we all decrease our social contacts a little bit, actually that helps to keep the variant at bay,’ said Dr Jenny Harries, the head of the UK Health Security Agency. But the government said people could go on with Christmas plans.
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The unclued lights are TV detectives and their PATCH: 10/8, 13/5D, 15/39, 26/41, 36/33.
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Earlier this week, the Conservative party sent an appeal to its registered supporters asking them to become members. ‘We’re delivering what you voted for in 2019,’ it read. ‘So why not help us keep going?’ Unfortunately for Boris Johnson, there are now several answers to that question. Two years ago, the Tories were re-elected on a promise to protect the public from the ever-rising cost of government. One of Johnson’s five pledges, personally signed by him, was not to raise taxation on ‘hard-working people’ and to stop any ‘jobs tax’. He has since changed his mind. In April, the Tory government will take a further 2.5 per cent of the salaries of those workers via National Insurance (i.e. a jobs tax).
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Red Peppa? In a rambling speech to the CBI, Boris Johnson praised Peppa Pig. Has she changed political sides? Peppa featured in advertising for New Labour’s Sure Start centres, and was booked to appear at the launch of Labour’s manifesto on families for the 2010 general election. However, her makers, E1 Entertainment, withdrew her at the last moment so as not to appear partisan. Lord Mandelson accused the BBC of being behind the move, suggesting the corporation was acting out of spite because Peppa was a star on rival Channel 5. Back on track Regular train services returned to Okehampton in Devon 49 years after the route was closed in the cuts proposed by British Rail chairman Richard Beeching.
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Peace project Sir: It was heartening to read your editorial on the peace which has reigned in Europe since 1945, in which you paid justified tribute to those who sacrificed their lives in the two world wars (‘Why we remember’, 13 November). You emphasised how Nato and the UN have contributed to the maintenance of peace, but sadly you failed to mention the European project and the EU. The first president of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy, always insisted that the project of European integration, launched by Adenauer, Schuman and De Gasperi, was above all a ‘peace project’. That continues to be the view of today’s Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen. The peace dividend of the EU must not be overlooked. The UK may no longer be a member of the EU.
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Home Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, praised Peppa Pig in a speech to the Confederation of British Industry: ‘Who would’ve believed that a pig that looks like a hairdryer... has now been exported to 180 countries?’ Then he lost his place and said: ‘Forgive me. Forgive me. Forgive me.’ Nineteen Conservative MPs voted against the government on a clause excluding means-tested council support payments from a new £86,000 lifetime limit on social care costs; it would mean a lost inheritance for heirs of people with assets worth no more than the limit. The writer J.K. Rowling was hounded by militant trans campaigners. ‘I’ve now received so many death threats I could paper the house with them,’ she said.
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The unclued lights are VILLAINS encountered by James Bond.
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